Melton is a professional engineer, environmental researcher, author, filmmaker and front man for the band Climate Change.
When permafrost melts, methane can build up beneath impermeable soils and suddenly erupt, apparently. In the formerly frozen tundra of Siberia, this is exactly what seems to have started happening. This 100 foot-wide hole of some obvious but unstated depth could have been caused by a meteorite, missile explosion or perhaps aliens. But this is…
Why is the warming “pause” happening? Carbon dioxide emissions continue to skyrocket. Is it because of natural cycles or because climate scientists have a conspiracy agenda? Or are they simply wrong? The temperature rise has slowed slightly when looking at the short-term, but only slightly. Deniers however say that since 1998 it hasn’t changed at…
First published on Truthout.org This article reports on a National Research Council literature review of why and how warming in the Arctic and arctic amplification is creating what appears to be more extreme winter weather in the U.S. Northeast and Northern Europe.
The last five years have seen 30 to 60 percent more rain in the Central Texas Highland Lakes watershed than in the worst five years of the drought of the 1950s, and the latest National Weather Service 30-year rainfall averages for the watershed have increased seven to twenty percent. Austin is up nine percent. Opposite…
Over the mid Northern Mid- and High Latitudes minimum temperatures will increases more than maximum temperatures. In other words, if it warms ten degrees in the daytime on average, it will only warm twenty degrees at night, on average across the globe at these latitudes. What he basically found was that that cold periods are…
Screen et al., Amplified mid-latitude planetary waves favour particular regional weather extremes, Nature Climate Change, June 22, 2014. Recent publications tell us that a warmer planet will have more cold extremes over high latitudes and a little south of there (the Great Lakes and northward in the US). This is because of Polar Amplification where…
For a generation we have proposed climate pollution control policy based on the 100-year time frame and simple “test tube” lab evaluation of the warming potential of individual greenhouse gases (also called “global warming potential” or GWP). This was once enough to prevent dangerous climate change, but the times have changed. Not only do we…
Wow! $0.05 per KwH! Five cents a kilabuck, amazing. The contract Austin City Council recently approved was supposed to be for 50 MW of solar generating capacity, but the price was so good, they bumped the project to 150 Mw making it tied for tenth largest in the world. Why is this happening so much…
The new discipline of global warming psychology tells that clear and concise communications of climate science can no longer provide the public knowledge needed to advance climate pollution policy. In 2013 alone, 13,000 papers were published about “global climate change” or closely related topics. How scientists interact with the public however has changed very little,…
From the 2013 Yale report Climate Change in the American Mind. “Only one in four know that there is a scientific consensus on climate change—only 25 percent of Americans understand that there is no argument about whether or not global warming is occurring among climate scientists. Between 97 and 98 percent of actively publishing climate…
Presentation for Sun City Democrats, Saturday May 16, 2014: https://climatediscovery.org/Climate_Change_in_Central_Texas_May_2014.ppt
First published on the Rag Blog April 23, 2014 Link — Sea level rise is accelerating. At some point, our barrier islands will cross a disintegration threshold and begin to disappear. Because every mile of every beach is created differently, we will see some beaches begin to suffer sooner than others. PADRE ISLAND — For…
Happy Earth Day everyone! My recent survey of sea level rise erosion on Padre Island has motivated me to produce another sea level rise documentary (see Beach Report 041414). Any funding out there? Donations? It will be a climate change adventure rockumentary with good news: the solutions to climate pollution will be no more expensive…
I just returned from a recon trip to Padre Island where I drove the entire 90 mile 4×4 beach from Brownsville to Corpus in preparation for a fund drive to make a new sea level rise film. Please donate if you can, otherwise—tell your friends and thanks! http://www.meltonengineering.com/donatepage.htm Mansfield Pass (boat access & jetties) cuts…
(First published on Truthout April 2, 2014) America’s emissions are not falling, as suggested by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The two main reasons are offshored goods and services and fracked natural gas. The EIA does two things that obscure reality when evaluating emissions. One is that it counts only emissions made in the…
First Published on Truthout, March 18, 2014 Today, we are burning fossil carbon one million times faster than it was naturally put in the ground, and carbon dioxide is increasing 14,000 times faster than anytime in the last 610,000 years (1,2). Climate is now changing faster than it has during any other time in 65…
A 30 page booklet by the American Psychological Association that helps us understand how behavior is ultimately responsible for this climate pollution mess we are in. Whether it is from $7 billion in climate change counter-movement funding (link) or sheer laziness, the results are the same. This booklet can give insights into why it is…
The climate change enhanced polar vortex has continued to break logic records. While we are experiencing a Great Lakes with ice cover greater than anything in 20 years, large parts of the North American West are experiencing their warmest winters ever recorded and Arctic sea ice is flirting with the lowest extent in the record…
Have you ever been incensed by a Facebook post citing some authoritative sounding person proclaiming yet again that climate science is all smoke and mirrors? Or have you ever been flummoxed in an email discussion about climate change where up is down, black is white and all of science is stood on its head? Where…
The polar jet stream normally runs around the roof of the world like the Siberian express. It spins around the top of the world and keeps Arctic cold bottled up and has been called the “polar vortex” ever since we have understood how different facets of Earth’s jet streams influence global weather. There is one…
